According to Louie Simmons, strength athlete at top shape can lose about 20% of 1RM weight in two weeks of inactivity.
Regular people also lose their shape, at slower, but increasiingle faster rate, as they gain shape. It is enough to lose 2%-4% (usually around 2.5%) of progress per week to hit a plateau in typical chest-back-legs split.
But, the fact that body can lose some shape can be beneficial. For example, hypertrophy-specific training [1] recommends 7-9 days rest period between end of one training period and start of next one. During this time body loses resistance to growth stimulus but does not detrain too much.
Also note here that HST recommends to abandon the typical split and perform all body training each training session, but with smaller number of sets, two sets maximum. More or less in line with what article talks about.
And, having mentioned Louie Simmons, I should mention Bulgarian Method: just train every day, using your max for a day, rest one day a week, make a world record. ;)
> According to Louie Simmons, strength athlete at top shape can lose about 20% of 1RM weight in two weeks of inactivity.
Westside was a very specific training methodology, and neurological adaptations matter, and Louie cared a lot more about performance in competition (which has a fair amount to do with one's mental state) than whatever the science says.
That is -- a period of NO or virtually no activity for a week can actually increase performance above the peak for a small window where your body has had time to repair the muscular damage but the neurological adaptations haven't faded. Two weeks is just about the end of that window, but it's completely at odds with what Louie believed.
Louie and or the Conjugate Method have absolutely nothing to do with Abadjhiev or the Bulgarian/Soviet methods, despite whatever his claims are. The Soviets/Bulgarians never used any of the things Conjugate is known for (bands, chains) or the periodization. Those nations focused on the classic/olympic lifts, or the sport of "weightlifting". Bands and chains are antithetical to everything they'd do there.
Bulgarian was, specifically: snatch or clean to a max for the day, do 5 singles, drop 10% and do 3 triples || drop 5% and do 3 doubles, do a power/hang/block variant of the lift you didn't do earlier, same scheme but higher reps, some squat variant (front/back), some pull variant (snatch/clean).
For the vast majority of people -- those who are not training for competition, or those who are not training to compete at an elite level -- all of this is useless and borderline counterproductive. Competing in (or training to compete in) a sport WILL eventually cause injuries.
The best advice you can give to people is "find something in the gym you enjoy enough to keep you going until it becomes a routine", because after 5+ years, if you're not aiming to win medals/break records (locally, state-level, nationally, whatever), the best overall outcomes will be from those who stayed in the gym, and getting injured is a big deterrent to that.
> strength athlete at top shape can lose about 20% of 1RM weight in two weeks of inactivity
that's probably not because of muscle mass loss, but body doesn't conserve glycogen, because think it doesn't need anymore, and this is fixable with 2-3 trainings.
Having mentioned the Bulgarian Method, we should mention too that those guys were roided out of their minds - it's crazy what being a guinea pig can do to a world record!
Regular people also lose their shape, at slower, but increasiingle faster rate, as they gain shape. It is enough to lose 2%-4% (usually around 2.5%) of progress per week to hit a plateau in typical chest-back-legs split.
But, the fact that body can lose some shape can be beneficial. For example, hypertrophy-specific training [1] recommends 7-9 days rest period between end of one training period and start of next one. During this time body loses resistance to growth stimulus but does not detrain too much.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20201111175258/http://hypertroph...
Also note here that HST recommends to abandon the typical split and perform all body training each training session, but with smaller number of sets, two sets maximum. More or less in line with what article talks about.
And, having mentioned Louie Simmons, I should mention Bulgarian Method: just train every day, using your max for a day, rest one day a week, make a world record. ;)